No one is denying that different populations of people can have different genetic characteristics.
But the analysis of populations becomes less and less useful as you zoom out, and less and less useful as you classify arbitrarily. The black race is both zoomed out quite far and also quite arbitrarily defined (to the extent it is defined at all).
The reason to examine things at that level with that degree of arbitrariness is, generally speaking, not good faith scientific endeavor. Instead, it’s a desire to justify differential treatment on the basis of race.
But I did not ask about your beliefs. You did claim that Murray was within the mainstream, and I asked if you have any examples of peer-reviewed publications supporting Murrays claims?
I think this is a good argument. I personally think there are always trade-offs for marginal increases in intelligence, and the genetic selection on it will therefore differ between populations.
I’m not claiming that it is settled though. Just that this is quite a mainstream opinion to hold within the field.
Im saying that I think it’s extremely difficult to distangle the importance of environment vs genetics between populations, and I am not familiar with any publication making an attempt to do this definitely, neither supporting nor disproving the claim. But that doesn’t mean we should assume that genetics has no influence on the differences between populations, that would be a totally unsubstantiated leap.
See? There it is. This is what pisses me off. You do realize that the “worse schools” you refer to (talking out your ass) are heavily staffed by black teachers and administrators? Is that what makes them “worse” IYO? :dubious:
I would invite everyone to read the Mother Jones article I posted about one of these supposedly “failing schools”. Here’s an excerpt:
Yet this school is in danger of being shut down by outside bureaucrats, simply because its test scores are low.
WNYC reported last April on the results in Camden, a district with only 15% white enrollment, after twenty years of a massive increase in funding:
So yes, absolutely: let’s make sure all black kids get to go to schools with good facilities, with new textbooks, programs to provide them meals (not just at school, but food they can take home, like my wife does at her school for her disadvantaged students), even laundry washing facilities. But if parents and students are happy, yet test scores stay low, let’s leave it alone and stop accusing teachers of undermining their students due to racism because they fail to squeeze blood from a turnip.
(Actually, the study abstract is pretty clear - “The hypotheses that resonate best with our findings are those related to parents’ literacy, family structure, and children’s nutrition and health.” So… Probably not.)
We can agree that genetics has some influence on IQ much in the same way that genetics has some influence on whether or not you’ll grow up to be the world’s greatest hedge fund manager. Sure, it has some influence, but holy shit does that influence pale in comparison to other environmental factors. That’s the key thing here. There are a lot of factors, mostly environmental, that influence your intelligence. If you grow up suffering from chronic malnutrition, your brain suffers. If you grow up in a place with little to no access to schooling, you’re not gonna learn much. If your parents don’t value education, or have no way to give you an education, you’re going to be dumb like they are. And so on and so forth.
This is the key point that really demolishes any claim that Murray may have to being right - the apparent effect of genetics on IQ (and given that we can’t isolate any gene or any number of genes that have a significant impact on intelligence in neurotypical individuals, the effect is simply apparent, and not demonstrated) are utterly swamped by the effects present in the environment. Environmental factors matter. They matter a hell of a lot. There’s absolutely no way to discount them. But what space is there left for any hypothetical “racial IQ” once we correct for them? Well… Ask Kenya.
Well, not my problem that you want to be in the certifiable column of racist fools.
Read it again, I’m not saying that “we expect to see virtually zero differences in aptitude.” Think, you straw man with an appropriate straw brain intelligence, All having the capacity of inheriting intelligence does not = all have the same intelligence.
I’m convinced these people are li… not arguing in good faith at this point.
They start with the presumption that all populations and races have equal average intelligence and work backward. They are loathe to go back to some ancient racist model of the hierarchy of man and are too dimwitted and uninspired to argue against that conclusion if we accept that there are group differences in iq.
I accept group differences in average iq, and I do not want to go back to some hierarchy of man. It is a LAZY and thoughtless fantasy to suggest people will automatically go to that place. You ought to still treat people as individuals, but are there consequences? Yes.
I often see articles railing against tech firms for not having enough minorities working for them, especially in engineering fields. This of course, does not include asians, the latter group are over represented but since they do well they do not count against the narrative. An HONEST person would look at the stats and conclude that the tech companies are NOT some white boys club with that many asians. But I digress, one consequence is that the reason we see less blacks and hispanics in such employment is that they have fewer black and hispanic applicants to pick from, and if you go to university graduation rates and degrees, you find there are far fewer black and latino minorities either taking or graduating in stem fields like computer science.
Why is that? Is THAT because society is oppressing black people in modern times? I think a larger factor is that there are fewer black people that have the chops to cut it in fields like computer science.
NO ONE likes that possibility, and so there are two main responses. Deny it’s a reality (most of the intellectual cowards on this board), or accept it and try to do something about it or compensate for such realities in other ways.
I want a ubi, in part because I think modern society is increasingly rewarding people with greater aptitude in our capitalistic economy. So one of my near term solutions is not to try to make all groups equally likely to be physicists, it’s to redistribute to minimize the downsides of not winning the genetic lottery, regardless of race. As a consequence of this, since I think black people have a lower average iq, they will get a disproportionate benefit from this kind of intervention. Is that me saying fuck the blacks, it’s not societies fault so let people wallow in the gutter?
IS it?
The second thing I want is what is already happening in China. BGI is sequencing the genomes of people and cataloging their iq and aptitude to try to tease out what gene combinations lead to what. Long term, I want us to offer the ability to enhance the children of anyone who wishes to boost stats like health and intelligence.
Once we can do that last, it won’t MATTER that after tens of thousands of years of human migration and isolated development and civilization there were some measurable differences in average intelligence between populations, we can just boost people up through gene alterations so that NO person or group is left behind that does not wish to be.
How is that racist? This is a LIBERAL policy of trying to help people after accepting that there are group differences. Accepting the latter does NOT imply we turn into conservative assholes.
Conversely, those righteous LIBERALS who deny the effects of intelligence on the fates of men, or that there are ANY meaningful group differences, are actively fucking over the very people they claim to be defending. Why? Because they misdiagnose the problem. Intel and google are not anti black, that is not the reason there are fewer black engineers, we need more blacks that go into computer science and can do well. And if a large part of the reason that is not happening is because of different gene averages that contribute to intelligence, then we need to work to fix that, not pretend it has no bearing on reality.
It’s like trying to bleed out a founder vs tackling the germ theory of disease. I do not CARE if you do not know how to fix things with the latter model a couple hundred years ago, it’s the correct model, so you need to shift focus towards things that actually help and will ACTUALLY matter.
God, sometimes I hate liberals. This thread is full of incalculable wishful thinking, we’re all the same! Children. Nature does not give a fuck that we are more equal, WE do as human beings, and WE have to be the ones to make that happen. Not just pretend nature is egalitarian like we are.
Which isn’t welfare, not by a long shot. IIRC in Losing Ground, he proposed that everyone should get a lump sum at their 18th birthday, amounting something like $10,000 – I’m not sure what the modern-day equivalent would be, but it’s a joke thinking something like that would ameliorate wealth inequality.
Can you give us a hint about what you are trying to debate or pit?
Is there something new being unveiled in this podcast or is it just a conversation with a guy that most people on this board already have pretty calcified opinions about?
Are you aware of any peer reviewed studies showing that there are differences between populations ? How large is such a difference and what is the confidence?
The heritability of IQ within Kenya is still high. Even if the whole population is rapidly rising in IQ. That’s the point. This is accepted, and can be read about on wikipedia.
I guess you are also an ignorant that I’m a Hispanic with English as a second language and I have had encounters with racists in Red Arizona. Thank you very much.
Yep, at least we know about the foolish part, for the racist part (to see if you are not one) I expect to see you criticize the OP that has already been on record of putting this thread in the Pit just because he was afraid to run into the hate speech rules for other forums, **I do not wonder anymore why he did that. **
Indeed; and as you note, podcasts are especially easy to fit in. I have a hard time finding time for all the TV shows I want to watch or books I want to read, but because I’m spending a lot of time cooking or doing dishes, I can easily listen to podcasts.
Yes, and I’ve repeatedly acknowledged that. It is my view that they should be seen as the default group of humans, where most of the variety in the genome lies, and groups like East Asians and Northern Europeans should be seen as the much less diverse, more homogenous subgroups whose individual characteristics include higher IQ. It’s not hard to imagine that a group intrepid enough to push that far away from home would be self-selected for intelligence, nor that they would face greater environmental pressures once they were far into the hinterlands.
But Murray does not discount them. Just the opposite. I shouldn’t even indulge you when you won’t even listen to what the guy says, but my resistance is wearing down.
I do wish there were a transcript so I could quote verbatim, but he talks about how your genetics only give you your potential, and then your environment is hugely responsible for how that plays out. Your genes provide your maximum potential at various abilities, and virtually no one ever reaches their potential in any one thing, much less in all things. If you have the genes to be a world-class marathoner, you still have to get good nutrition and spend years at carefully managed and grueling training to actually get to where you can win a race. But without the right genes, all the nutrition and high-tech training in the world won’t get you any further than being a talented amateur, a weekend warrior.
I’m going to keep asking people: how do you explain what happened in the study cited in the *Freakonomics *transcript? How about the experience in Camden? Why do school reformers never seem to get anywhere, at least if the goal is eliminating (or even significantly narrowing) the score gap between black and white kids? And why do kids raised in affluent black families still lag behind their affluent white peers?
Salvor, awesome, awesome post (#170). Great point about genetic engineering, too, which will make this all moot once people get over their squickiness.